 Hillary Clinton on Friday denied her White House campaign was in disarray, despite sliding poll ratings and an uproar sparked by an aide who questioned her rival Barack Obama's drug history. "If I had listened to ... the Washington chattering class, I would not be standing here would I?" Clinton told reporters, as controversy and reports of campaign turmoil swirled around her 2008 presidential bid.
| So okay, occasionally the chattering class is right. Score one for them ... |
"I believe in trusting my own instincts. I feel very, very good about the case that I am making."
New signs of fragility for the former first lady came just 20 days before Iowa holds first state votes for a Democratic nomination that Clinton seemed to have in her grasp just a few months ago.
She has endured six weeks of woe, battered by a shaky debate performance in Philadelphia, accusations that her campaign was planting questions at her events and the Obama drugs slur.
| Her support is a mile wide and an inch deep. Few people particularly like her, and fewer trust her. She's the candidate of the Democratic establishment. She's also one nasty individual, and people intuitively understand that. I thought she'd get the nomination myself, but it appears that people are figuring her out six months early. |
In a determined press conference, Clinton promised a "mad dash" towards the caucuses, starting this weekend with a five-day chopper tour or "Hilo-copter" blitz through all the midwestern's state's 99 counties.
| Check the weather map, Hilde, you might be grounded. |
A day after personally saying sorry to Obama over the remarks by powerful New Hampshire aide Bill Shaheen, Clinton pointedly did not take several chances to say that Obama's drugs past had no bearings on his White House prospects.
| Shaheen did his job like a good solider, and if Hilde wins he'll be rewarded. |
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